Lab Members

John Rolston, MD, PhD

Dr. John Rolston is a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist at the University of Utah, where he is the Director of Epilepsy Surgery and Director of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. Clinically, he specializes in epilepsy surgery (including laser ablation), deep brain stimulation (DBS) for movement disorders (Parkinson’s, dystonia, tremor), trigeminal neuralgia, and neuromodulation for psychiatric disorders (such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Tourette’s syndrome). Dr. Rolston received his Bachelor’s degree in computer science from Columbia University, before studying brain-computer interfaces for epilepsy during his PhD, where he worked with Dr. Steve Potter at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr. Robert Gross at Emory University. He received an MD from Emory University before completing his residency training in neurosurgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

Tyler Davis, MD, PhD

Tyler Davis received both the MD and PhD degrees from the University of Utah in 2007 and 2013 respectively. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Utah.

His research interests include the development of clinically viable neural interface systems for a broad range of applications including prosthetics and the treatment of epilepsy.

Elliot Smith, PhD

Elliot Smith received his B.S. in psychology with a minor in mathematics from the University of Washington in Seattle and his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Utah. He did postdoctoral research at Columbia University where he focused on recording both isolated human neurons and local field potentials to understand coding in the human brain and features of spontaneous human seizures. Dr. Smith will continue this research at the university of Utah, where he aims to study the neural underpinnings of human social cognition, cognitive control, and epilepsy.

Brian Philip, M.Sc.

Brian Philip received a B.S. in Biology from SUNY Albany and a M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from SUNY Binghamton. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Neural Interfaces Engineering at University of Utah working under supervision of Dr. John Rolston. His aims are to identify and model how diseases affect information processing within the brain and how to modulate neural activity to treat the affected regions.

Daria Anderson, Ph.D.

Daria Anderson received her BS in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Neuroscience from Duke University and her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Utah. Her PhD research focus was to use computational modeling to estimate neural activation and develop novel electrode technologies for Deep Brain Stimulation. In her postdoc, she is interested in applying her computational background to the epilepsy patient population through the creation of patient specific models to determine functional and structural connectivity metrics that correlate with therapeutic outcomes. Daria also receives mentorship from Dr. Wilcox in the Pharmacology and Toxicology department to optimize stimulation protocols for seizure arrest using pre-clinical epilepsy models.

Rose Caston

Rose Caston is an MD-PhD student at the University of Utah School of Medicine. She received a B.A. in biomedical engineering from Dartmouth College and a B.E. from the Thayer School of Engineering. At Dartmouth, her research with the Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Center involved developing implantable oxygen probes for brain tumor sites to improve the efficacy of cancer treatment. Rose is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Dr. John Rolston's lab in Neural Engineering at the University of Utah. She aims to study the functional architecture of the brain in patients with epilepsy to improve treatment with closed-loop neuromodulatory devices.